Siege Site

Siege Site. . In front of you on the morning of August 9, 1877, you would have seen soldiers and Montana volunteers pass by as they began to deploy for the coming attack on the Nez Perce encampment just through the trees. , Following the army's surprise attack, the Nez Perce mounted a fierce counter-offensive. Here soldiers frantically dug rifle pits as warriors surrounded them. Low mounds and shallow ditches are the only evidence of the desperate fighting that centered on this pine thicket. , (Captain Rawn and his company) met the main body trying to entrench, by throwing up dirt, the rice trowel bayonet for that purpose. One man would scrape up the dirt while every second man would continue to fire.... We now lay in a square probably forty feet each way, the Indians on every side, and not a man expecting to leave alive. - Corp. Charles N. Loynes, U.S. Army